I heard this clip on a Christian radio show warning about the evils of the interweb. They said if you’re not paying for the site you’re on, you’re not the customer, you’re the product. Mic drop. Good point. Its like Fakebook, they’re turning more tricks on you than a New Orleans hooker. You, and your data, are being sold. Its like the ‘free trading’ app Robinhood, the reason its free is they’re selling your stock order info to the market makers (I believe that’s correct).

Which brings me to The New American. They are the print and electronic publication of the John Birch Society. They are an ant in the world of mega-conservative sites like FOX News and Breitbart. Yet they attract the devoted attention of spammers. The steadfast and never-ending slavish devotion of spammers. Why is that? They have a comment screener service called Disqus that most of them have. Disqus has their filters set to immediately clamp down if you try to say anything remotely obscene or dirty. Poop, pee, GD, MF, SOB, and of the male/female specific body parts, or any other rudimentary foul language.

I had noted in the comment section Disqus’s inability to stop these spammers, “I make $12,000 a month working from home!” and how the picture accompanying these spam posts were always of a woman with giant knockers (like the one pictured above). Disqus deleted my comment about the spammers as spam, and I believe it was because of the use of knockers not in relation to a door. I got to wondering, Disqus is paid by these host sites to run a good comment section, why are they allowing these spammers to foul up the site of the people paying them?

Then it occurred to me, maybe Disqus owns the spammers? Maybe that’s how they bring in extra cash. Then I went 3rd level devious, maybe The New American is being paid by these spammers to allow them on their site? Because for God’s sake it would be child’s play to set up a word filter to stop these spammers. Its the same spiel every time! Follow the money. Somebody is getting paid to allow them on the sites. And what’s particularly insidious about these techno terrorists, they don’t make a stand alone comment you could ignore, they reply to your comment!

It all reminded me of the harassment advertising I got on my recently cancelled landline phone. The only people that called me was a call center in India. Once in awhile it was scammers in Cancun, Mexico, and a few from south Florida, but mainly it was that Indian call center. American telemarketers you can generally get rid of them (I think) because in a ‘worst case’ scenario, they know you could always come visit them. I tried being nice to them, just like they were actual people. I tried being mean to them. I begged them, I threatened them, but they would not stop calling!

Depending on what cycle their computer program was, it was either 10:30 am, 2:41 pm or 4:40 in the afternoon. They called, every damn day. They weren’t really interested in selling, mostly just harassing. I never did figure out what they wanted. Were they going for my social security number? Or just a credit card number? I never did figure it out. They would pretend they were Mariott Hotels, Hilton Hotels, Healthcare insurance, auto warranty. I have to assume not everybody in India is a scammer, it just seems that way.

Then you’re let down by the FCC and their precious “do not call list”, which turns out to be largely worthless against furrin call centers. It might work with American telemarketers who still have some remnant of honor, decency and morals, but certainly not with the dirty scum sucking furriners. Then you have Century Link who until recently charged .99 cents for “last call return” feature, now they charge a $1.50. But that’s not the worst part. The bad part is these Indian call centers computer is able to hide their area code from Century Link. So when you go to file a “harassing call complaint” with the FCC, you don’t have the area code required in order to file a complaint. You get charged the full amount, but you don’t get the full number. A 7 digit phone number is worthless.

In the old days you could have an “unlisted number” from Ma Bell for free. Now they charge you $5 dollars a month to be ‘unlisted’. So basically you end up paying $40 bucks a month (local calls only) to be harassed by an Indian call center. The phone company doesn’t help you. The FCC doesn’t help you. You’re just on your own. The reverse imperialism is ironic. We may have exploited these people in the past, but they’re bringing us down by the way they exploit our welfare system and harass us.